Dark Side of Fashion Sustainability with Tara King-Haagen

By Patricia Frischer

Tara King-Haagen was the invited guest to the weekly Compassionate Art Conversations at the end of November. This is organized by Kira Carillo Corser and Tara is not only the Compassionate Arts marketing director but also a jewelry and sustainable artist for EarthTribe.  These are notes from the lecture.  

Why do you shop? For some it is retail therapy or recreation. For others, it is self expression. Maybe you just have the need to cover your body and stay warm.  But we could all become more aware of where our fashions originate. 

Sustainable to me could mean not using anything endangered and not exploitive. But there is a fine line that can blur between saving the animals and saving the environment. There is a lot of unfairness in the fashion industry. What makes one t-shirt worth $300 and another $3? We know branding is a big part of that dynamic.  

Sustainable fashion can be more expensive as research and new processes are developed . But when we support sustainable fashion and it becomes the norm, prices will come down.

So a few tips to make yourself more aware:

•  Always recycle clothes. Don’t throw them away as they will just end in a land fill. 
• Look for ways to upcycled clothes which makes them creative and  original.
• Ignore fashion trends which encourage you to buy over and over. That is a marketing ploy.
• Look for fashion that suits you, color, styles, shapes. 
• If you buy something, get rid of something out of your closet.
• When you buy,  look for original creative pieces that will last and about which you feel passionate.

·       Summing up: Buy less, choose well, make it last

Always recycle clothes. Don’t throw them away as they will just end in a land fill. 

Mother Nature knows best!

Find exceptional fashion and invest in fewer pieces. 

Research the sources of your clothes before you buy them.

Pineapples can be made into shoes.

Kelp can make faux furs.

Pretend I Am Dead and Bring Your Wallet

By Patricia Frischer

Luis Ituarte Open Studio 2021 - Nov. 12 -15, 2021, 10 am to 7 pm.
Reception Sat. Nov. 13 from 6 pm
3705 Rudnick Drive, Jamul, 91935 luis_ituarte@hotmail.com 619 455 5736 

Luis Ituarte; living his best life: Photo by Robin Brailsford

Luis Ituarte opens his studio this fall and shows the San Diego audience his range of art which is as wide as the combined brims of all the hats he wears i.e. working as a curator, program coordinator, art center director, art instructor, writer, and public speaker.  Ituarte has always produced art and has always had a job in the art community. Now, he and his wife, poetess Gerda Govine, have a large property in Jamul which can finally house their extensive output. 

Over a life time, he has worked in many mediums on many projects, but he is one of the few artist whose work in each series fortifies itself and never seems repetitive. I have chosen to show some multiples of these consecutive works so you get an idea, but I have also included some singular pictures which are  also a part of a larger series. 

The delight of an open studio tour is  to see a vast array of works as well as the inner workings of the actual work space. Ituarte is so generous to open his home and studio so the public can have this special view. On Saturday night from 6 pm there will be entertainment including a poetry reading by Govine.  And yes, bring your wallet and collect a number of these works now while you can still afford them. Ituarte is scheduled to have an exhibition at the CECUT in 2024. 

All following photos by Patricia Frischer (Yes, I take the blame for the bad quality!)

See if you can follow the dancing green line in these black light beauties. 

Photos taken under a black light. 

The curved line and delicate hand of this and the following works seems to have the influence of Jacque Cocteau, Erte, and Alexander Calder all at once. 

A more hearty version of the line, dances in these colorful wrought iron works. 

These works are all portraits and although abstract pay homage to the gesture of the body.

Free brush figure drawing on Chinese Gold good luck paper. 

Deeply colorful free gestures...remember there are dozens of these. 

A set of geometric plays on line, shape and color. 

Under the hot sun, cool off in the shade and take your time to go through stacks of art and choose your favorites.

Sumac pruned branches, are carved to reveal patterns as ancient as they are modern.

An overview of the property and garden.

These last  pictures are taken inside the artist studio and give you an idea of his inspirations.

Being born and raised in Tijuana Mexico, Ituarte completed his education in Mexico City and the City of Guanajuato in 1995.  He returned to Tijuana to start an exchange project  “Bajo El Mismo Sol” (Under the Same Sun) between LA and TJ.  In 2003, he founded Consejo Fronterizo de Arte y Cultura (COFAC)/Border Council of Arts and Culture, a non-profit organization dealing with border issues and the environment. Under the umbrella of COFAC, a house where a trafficking tunnel was discovered was transformed into La Casa del Túnel: Art Center that same year. In 2008 he founded Mariposa Artist Residency & Gallery, located across the street from La Casa del Túnel: Art Center. Ituarte turned both of these thriving projects over to a non-profit organization in 2013. He now lives and works in Jamul, CA.

Luis Ituarte Open Studio 2021 - Nov. 12 -15, 2021, 10 am to 7 pm.
Reception Sat. Nov. 13 from 6 pm

3705 Rudnick Drive, Jamul, 91935 luis_ituarte@hotmail.com 619 455 5736  

Dance Time at the Mingei Museum

By Lonnie Burstein Hewitt. Photos by Maurice Hewitt.

Saturday Night, 11/6/21: The nine performers in Everyday Dances, with John Malashock on the right.

In September, the Mingei International Museum had its grand re-opening, but I never got to see a performance in its new theater space until last weekend, when John Malashock, Founder and Artistic Director of Malashock Dance, brought his Everyday Dances there.

Malashock, who founded his company in 1988, has had a distinguished career as performer and choreographer, and invited five other local choreographers to join him in presenting a program of 10 short pieces at the Mingei, one from each of them, and five of his own.

Why the title? "It's a riff on the Mingei's name, which comes from the Japanese word meaning 'art of the people' or art from everyday objects," he said. "The idea is taking the everyday and making art out of it. Each piece runs between three and seven minutes-short is good these days-and each has its own style, so there's a broad range of artistic voices. The program is only an hour long, but it gives an idea of what's going on in the wider dance community here." 

The dances certainly brought the theater to life. A former loading deck, it's now a flexible space that can seat up to 120, but only offered seating for 60 at Everyday Dances to give the performers more room to move. It was a delight to feel close-but not too close-to the dancers, and to share a sense of spaciousness with the masked but obviously delighted audience.

The hour-long program opened and closed with pieces by Malashock-the first quite appealing, and the last quite dramatic-but every one of the ten dances had its own tone and style, and its own special appeal. "They're wonderful small-cast works, created in the spirit of the everyday, because we work every day," Malashock said in his introduction to the performance. 

The five guest choreographers-Blythe Barton, Ryan Orion Beck, Lauren Christie, Marcos Duran, and Odessa Uno--all offered distinctive pieces, and the pieces all fit together beautifully. Two of the choreographers-Lauren Christie and Marcos Duran-also danced in their own works. All the dancers were top-flight, and it was no surprise that all three performances were sold-out.

Everyday Dances also gave us a chance to admire the dancers' backdrop-the unusual curtain by Amsterdam-based designer Petra Blaisse, who was inspired by San Diego's jacaranda trees. Made of double-sided dyed felt cutouts, backed with a layer of sheer silk organza, it let in a just a bit of light from the streetlamps outside the glass wall of the theater, creating a softly mystical mood for the Saturday night performance.

Detail of the curtain by Petra Blaisse.

There will be a second weekend of Everyday Dances November 19-21 at Malashock Dance Studio Theater in Liberty Station. Tickets range from $10-35 for Friday and Saturday evenings, and the Sunday matinee is pay what you can. For details, go to  Malashock Dance Everyday Dances

The Mingei is open Saturday-Wednesday 10 am-5 pm, Thursday and Friday 10 am-8 pm. with new exhibitions coming soon. Admission ranges from free to $18, with the Commons Level free to all, and Artifact Restaurant opening for lunch and drinks starting November 17. 

Lonnie Burstein Hewitt is an award-winning author/lyricist/playwright who has written about arts and lifestyle for the La Jolla Light and other local media for over a dozen years. You can reach her at  hew2@sbcglobal.net.

Stretched Language: Bonita Museum obeys Rule 42

By Patricia Frischer

Catalog cover by Alexander Kohnke

Rule 42: Stretched Language is an exploration into Visual, Concrete and Mathematical Poetry which runs from November 6 – December 3, 2021 at the Bonita Museum and Cultural Center. This exhibition of evocative, visual expressions curated by Vallo Riberto explores our human language as a method for examining the world. Yes, it stretches language and challenges the viewer.

Visual/Concrete and Mathematical Poetry is art that uses text such as icon-graphics, composed or designed to be read and seen for the complete experience. The individual poet or artist blurs boundaries, for example fusing visual poetry (with its many sub types such as concrete poetry, ideogram and calligram and mathematical visual poetry) and word painting, abstract calligraphy, mathematical poetry and abstract writing. 

The catalog for this show designed by one of the artists, Alexander Kohnke, is not only a guide to the show but presents a history of these genres and some essays by its proponents. Why Rule 42? If you are confused, you could be said to be at sixes and sevens. 6 X 7 = 42. If you remember your Louis Carroll's Alice and Wonderland, rule 42 was that 'All persons more than a mile high must leave the court." Drink from the bottle, grow larger and be prepared to stretch your imagination and take a fresh look at the art of words. 

Alex Caldiero, Alexander Kohnke, Allison Wiese, Avital Oehler,
David Quattrociocchi, Db Foster, Douglas Mcculloh, Gustavo Mayoral,
Harry Polkinhorn, John Dillemuth, John Halaka, Karl Kempton,
Kazmier Maslanka, Kristine Dikeman with Lisa Mansfield & Liz Waugh,
Paul Gailiunas, Toru Nakatani, Trinh Mai. 
Spoken word performances by Alex Caldiero, Gerda Govine and Rosa Sandoval on Nov 6 from 4:30 to 7:30

 I visited the show before it was fully hung and  please excuse the quality of my photographs. Thanks to Lonnie Burstein Hewitt for her additional images. There is much, much more to explore in this exhibition than the small taste below so allow plenty of time.

Kazmier Maslanka, with the curator Vallo Roberto and our partners spent one wonderful day and night discussing this show and coming up with the tag line of stretched language. With my years of working with Kaz on the DNA of Creativity for his team's effort  PAMM - PolyAesthetic Mapping: The Muses, I have become familiar with Mathematical Poetry and the niche these works inhabits. So I am going to take a bit of time to explain some of this art as they grow so much in meaning with his guidance. The work is wonderful, but the work with Kaz standing next to you is divine. I encourage you to attend  Similar Triangle Poems Workshop Sat. Nov.13 by Kaz Maslanka who will introduce a system for creating mathematical poetry where participants can create their own math based poetry.

Kazmier Maslanka - This is one of the latest works he created during the the upsetting times of the pandemic. Kaz makes word mathematical formulas.  The non attached soul is to a A Jury of 13 acute anxieties in a shouting match, what  my corporal body is to a dark cloud of 13 vultures circling the corpse that my soul drags. When you read these words, you have to create a picture in your mind.  This is followed by the words for 11+ 2 and 12 + 1. Both numbers equal 13. Then look hard at the circles in the image. There are 13 and each is connected to the same letter because the phrases eleven plus two and twelve plus one have exactly the same letters. The skeleton, the vulture and the monkey brain references are all there. 

Kazmier Maslanka - I shall leave this one for you to ponder, or,please, go the show where there is a QR code next to each work for a deeper dive. 

Kazmier Maslanka - This older work is about a hermaphrodite whose mother made the decision for the male organs to be removed. Latter in life this "women" decided she was a man. When close to the work, it dissolves with no identity, but as you step back you can see a figure with glasses. Try squinting your eyes. The loss soul is to being on an ocean raft, as Cosmic noise is to Time Square. 

Kazmier Maslanka - In this wall of works, the speed of a shape is noted to increase or decrease depending on its shape and direction. Once you notice that,  formulas can be created to describe this effect. 

 

Kazmier Maslanka

Kazmier Maslanka - Don't miss the computer and the printer at the end of his darkened corridor of illuminated works. This is a work that answers the age old question about how time goes faster the older we get. At the time of your birth you were going at the speed of light compared to your mother age (according to Einstein theory of relativity). A formula can be devised that tells you your relative speed today compared to your mom's speed today. Extrapolated to the nth degree this becomes almost infinity. if you enter your birth date and that of your mother, you can get a print out of this exact difference in the relative speed of life going by between any two birth dates. 

Daniel Foster is known to many of us for his time at the San Diego Art Institute more than 20 years ago, his stint running the Oceanside Museum of Art, Riverside Museum and Riverside Foundation. But db Foster is the artist hermit that lies within. He has almost 40 years of work that he shows very rarely and never sells. Much of this work consist of a trunkful of journals where language, words, paragraph, graphics are used to record an inner life. Some of his other work is conceptual, some abstract but it only has a life when it is contextualized. 

db Foster - using children's letter to form temporary word poems in the sand. Photo by Lonnie Burstein Hewitt

db Foster

db Foster

When I saw this wall of work by Karl Kempton, I had no idea that these images were originally only in book form. Vallo Riberto, as curator, actually took the images and made 3-d works. This make the art come alive in a way far beyond the usual curatorial duties. 

Karl Kempton - visual poems stamped in color tin.

Karl Kempton -  a work enhance with color and cut out shown with the book image. Photo by Lonnie Burstein Hewitt

Karl Kempton - a work transformed into an embroidery mini tapestry.

Vallo Roberto -  curator with the work of Karl Kempton

Kristine Dikeman collaborated with Lisa Mansfield and Liz Waugh after a workshop she gave on zoom to a much wider audience than normal. One lady from the UK, one from Australia with Kristine constructed three books with conductive wires that broadcast stories. The great North Sea Floods from 1953, 100 years from then 2053 when the fires are still raging in California and 2153 when Australia becomes a frozen wasteland give us past, near present and possible future.  

Kristine Dikeman

Kristine Dikeman.  Photo by Lonnie Burstein Hewitt

John Dillemuth gives us Tickle My Fancy, Pray Please, Scram and You Take the Cake where the shadows are as important as the words.

John Dillemuth 

John Halaka - within each circle floats the names of so many Palestinian refugees and farmers. He considers himself as a public servant. 

Alex Caldiero -  a performance artist who I know has recited Allen Ginsberg poem The Howl. I saw that in person read by Ginsberg more than 50 years ago and would love to hear it again. 

 Alexander Kohnke - a series of braille images which are the dark dots that spell out "florescent black" but since they are under glass, they can't be felt. Alexander Kohnke was a San Diego Art Prize recipient in 2017

Douglas McCulloh - a 200 foot role of paper which names every single battle in history 

Douglas McCulloh - Vallo Riberto showing us the very first entry 2400 BC 

 

Harry Pokinhorn - In the late 1970s and early 1980s he co-founded Atticus Press and co-edited Atticus Review. He is a psychoanalyst, professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University, and director of SDSU Press. I found it interesting that he studied Walter Iten color theory and that might explain the confident use of color in his work. 

Gerda Govine - who doesn't Weave Together Pain Pain and and and but only Gerda makes JOY

Toru Nakatani - The signifiers and the signified, just the faintest pencil in the word bubbles for this Japanese artist interested in concrete poetry. 

Avital Oehler is represented by this brilliantly installed video, another  curatorial decision that  transforms the Bonita Museum into a space fully reaching its potential. As you can hear in the video, this is a visual documentation of the series of blood test over a period of time when the artist discovered she had an autoimmune disease. 

Gerda Govine read this poem Hands privately in Cardiff by the Sea, but as part of the Rule 42 Stretched Language exhibition curated by Vallo Riberto at the Bonita Museum.

Some wonderful installation views sent by Kaz Maslanka